A few weeks ago, I wrote about the mental shift required of authors in the transition from editing their manuscript to typesetting their book, of the need to let go, give their book its freedom. However, sometimes this shift only truly comes at the proofing stage when the author suffers a rude awakening about what changes are actually allowed. Suddenly, there is heard the discordant sound of money being demanded with menaces.

How can this be?

Typesetters must be paid

Today, more likely than not, the typesetter of your book isn’t someone beavering away in a dungeon beneath your editor’s executive suite. Rather, he is a freelancer whose office looks out on cows and crops somewhere out in the countryside or an employee of one of the big Indian outsourcing firms in an industrial park on the outskirts of Chennai. Either way, the typesetter is paid for his work – and often on a per-page basis, not by the hour.

(See here for more about typesetters – and designers – and how they tick.)

In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that typesetters try to avoid being saddled with extra, unpaid work by threatening publishers with penalty charges. In turn, to protect itself, the press will seek to pass responsibility for any such costs over to the author.

Contractual consequences

Has your contract a clause something like this?

If so, you are in good company. This sort of wording is pretty standard among publishers. Indeed, sometimes it can all get quite mathematical. The terms of a contract may well include a maximum amount of proof corrections that authors can make at the publisher’s expense. Anything over and above that level will be charged back to them. What of course the press is doing here is to protect itself against any extra charges levied by the typesetter for ‘unnecessary’ changes.

While most publishers would accept some changes, please bear in mind that alterations to proofs are time-consuming, costly and can introduce further errors. Many typesetters thus charge publishers for every single correction apart from those that relate to fixing typesetting errors, not least those arising from the file conversion, as we have seen. (Not even typos are exempt; after all, these should have been picked up during copy-editing.) Charges can escalate rapidly, and eventually (as seen above) your own pocket could be at risk.

Proofing on a short leash

Perhaps because she doesn’t feel comfortable with this situation, your production editor is likely to work hard to avoid any possibility of such charges raising their ugly heads. Pre-emptively, she will do this by clamping down hard on what changes you are allowed to make to the proofs.

Arguably, this is quite reasonable. The time for resolving ifs and maybes was in the writing phase. Clarifications, restructuring and polishing your text belonged to editing, likewise any last-minute content changes. Thereafter, it is only reasonable to expect that the text delivered for typesetting is final. Consequently, your job now is only to correct any typesetting errors but otherwise to make no changes.

That’s all very well and good but, out in the real (scholarly) world, something pertinent to your text may well have happened that absolutely must be mentioned in your book, or there could be typos and factual errors that (true) should have been but were not picked up in the editing process. As I said above, most publishers would accept many such changes but expect that the patience of your production editor will rapidly wear thin. Some leeway will be given with the first, unpaginated proofs but almost nothing with the final, paginated proofs.

As for feedback on (and suggested changes to) the page design, something that I raised as a possibility here during the first proofing and that I’ll elaborate on in my next post about the final proofs, expect that here especially you will encounter quite stiff resistance.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t still take a step back and look at your book with a critical eye. You can be sure that others after publication will be doing the same. You may not win the argument in every respect but you could still achieve a better look for your finished book.

(Post #8 of the Proofing section of a lengthy series on the book production process, the first post of which is here.)

Now is the time for you to advise your production editor of any corrections and other changes to the first set of proofs. As we shall see, there are several ways in which this can be done. At this point, the issue of how many changes you can make may raise its ugly head. This delicate matter is discussed in a later post. At the same time, someone else may be proofing your text.

When marking changes to the proofs, follow your publisher’s instructions carefully. Possibly you will be expected to mark the actual printed pages, using proof-reading marks as in this sample. Some publishers even require their authors to mark the text using a special colour (red ink, for instance).

Let’s face it, however, these proofing marks aren’t that easy to remember. Many authors will prefer to annotate the proofs with their own system of marking up. If your production editor is reasonable, this shouldn’t be a problem provided the annotations are clear and consistent.

A common alternative to marking up the printed proofs is to prepare a simple list of changes. This can be written in a text file and sent to the publisher as an e-mail attachment or even written directly in an e-mail, as in this example.

And increasingly authors are using the commenting features now available with Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader (and illustrated here).

Publisher’s proofing

At the same time that you are preparing your author corrections, chances are that someone else hired by your publisher will be proofing the text as well. This could be an in-house editor, the copy-editor (an attractive proposition as s/he is already familiar with the text) or a professional proof-reader.

Again, the results may be advised to your production editor in various ways but the key difference from what you have advised is that theproof-reader doesn’t necessarily know what is correct. Yes, typos and the like can be corrected but often cases of inconsistent spelling/usage can only be flagged up.

Reconciliation

Thereafter, your production editor will need to reconcile the two sets of proofs to avoid the typesetter receiving contradictory sets of instructions. Obviously, as part of this reconciliation, any inconsistencies in your text spotted by the proof-reader will be referred to you for clarification.

Normally, initial typesetting of your book will not take too long, especially if no attempt is made to finalize the pagination of the book (for instance, no illustrations yet placed in the document).

As we have seen earlier, the result of the initial typesetting is a set of first proofs delivered to the production editor. These proofs will be quickly checked then your production editor will send you a copy for proof-reading. At the same time, chances are that someone at the press or an outside professional proof-reader will check this first proof as well.

About the first proof

The proof received will almost certainly be typeset text output on ordinary pages (described and illustrated here) rather than the galleys of yesteryear. In all probability, these page proofs will not have been finally paginated (essentially because the illustrations are missing and some changes to the text are expected). In addition, as pointed out in Leena’s mail above, much else about the proof indicates that it is a preliminary version of your book. For example:

On the other hand, you should expect something more than a picture of the typesetting in its raw, newly converted state. In particular:

The book/page design should be apparent in the page layout (e.g. trimmed page size and fonts are correct).

Paragraph (and character) styles should have been implemented in the text.

Your primary task

What your production editor will be expecting you to do in quite a short time is carefully to go through the proofs, marking up any changes required. (My next post describes marking up in greater detail while the subsequent post lists the common proofing marks used in printing and publishing.)

Paragraph appearance is inappropriate (possibly due to incorrect assignment of paragraph style).

Of course, you may wish to request other changes that have nothing to do with errors in the text. This is a problematic issue that I shall discuss in a separate post later this week.

Proofing with the other side of the brain

In addition – although the lack of illustrations, final formatting, etc. may force you to stretch your imagination somewhat – now is probably the last moment when you can comment on the page design and request changes. (Unfortunately, for most authors it is also the first time that they have seen how the publisher intends to layout their book – so this is a last-gasp thing I am foisting upon you. Indeed, it is probably too late for you to make a similar ‘right-brain’ assessment with the final proofs that I suggest in an upcoming post.)

While it is unlikely that you can get your publisher to completely change the page design presented to you, there is a chance that you can convince your production editor to make some changes. For instance, if you can demonstrate that the fonts used evoke a mood/approach at odds with (your treatment of) the subject, then it need not be too late for such a systematic change to be implemented.

Be smart, however, in what you request. You’ll have a greater chance of agreement to global changes that can be implemented relatively easily rather than to custom changes that must be made on a case-by-case basis.

And finally

There are different ways of noting your proofing changes/corrections; these I describe in my next post. If you choose to mark up the proofs received from your publisher, then make sure that you save a copy of what you send back. This will be your reference at the final-proof stage, ensuring it is quick to check that the changes you requested have been implemented.

(Post #5 of the Proofing section of a lengthy series on the book production process, the first post of which is here.)